Early Years Curriculum
Intent
‘Happily learning together; preparing for life.’
At Green Park School, we believe that the first years in education are a vital time for preparing children for their future learning journey. Children learn best when they are happy, safe, secure and have a high sense of wellbeing. Staff place a strong emphasis on providing our children with a safe and friendly environment both indoors and out, that promotes resilience, friendships and positive relationships. Through play experiences and purposeful teaching, our children become confident and independent to explore and are enthusiastic to learn. It is important that learning is accessible for all and that children’s individual progress is valued and that the team works closely and collaboratively with parents in order to ensure we value home experiences and develop a true reflection of the whole child to prepare them for the next stage in their school life.
The breadth of our curriculum is designed with three goals in mind:
1) To give pupils appropriate experiences to develop as confident, responsible citizens that love to learn;
2) To provide an enriching experiencing enhancing children's ‘cultural capital’;
3) To provide a progressive, ambitious, academic curriculum
Implementation
Teaching and Learning: Across the year, we explore our school values and a strong focus is placed on nurturing children to become resilient, confident and independent learners. Personal, social and emotional development, alongside the teaching of communication and language skills, underpin the foundations for learning at Green Park. We consider social skills and positive interactions with adults and peers crucial for children to be able to learn and thrive as they develop. The exploration of number is planned for daily, in a series of progressive lessons, so that by the end of Reception, pupils are fluent with the value of numbers up to twenty and have strong mental recall of number bonds to ten, giving them the foundations to support their learning as they enter Year One and beyond. Developing a love of reading and the skills to be able to read, is a high priority in our EYFS. Carefully sequenced reading progression and systematic phonics using the Little Wandle Program, teaching lies at the heart of our learning foundations. Daily writing sessions build on the knowledge acquired in reading and phonics, and through a range of high-quality texts, linked to our themes, the children begin to explore and develop a love of writing.
The learning journey begins by weaving personal, social and emotional developmental skills into all that we do, in order to create pupils that are ready to learn. We cultivate an ethos where pupils are emboldened to ‘have a go’, we model how to embrace new challenges and guide children to celebrate their achievements and relish new goals. Self-belief and positive attitudes underpin our foundations for learning and from here we support all pupils to achieve their full potential. PSED is taught through our scheme One decision and indirectly throughout the whole week, in the language we use, stories we read, assemblies, circle times, class attitudes and the values that we promote. Through progressive planning and teaching, we ensure that all our pupils are ‘school ready’ academically, personally, socially and emotionally. High expectations and aspirations are set for all children to achieve their full potential and to become competent in the basic skills of reading, writing and number, so that many possibilities are made available to them as they progress through the school.
Unique Child:Every child is a unique child who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.
We build on children’s prior learning from previous settings and from home, to ensure that learning is meaningful, relevant and tailored to individual needs, interests and learning styles. We strive to promote the holistic development of all children in order to build a solid and broad foundation for lifelong learning.
Enabling Environments: Children learn and develop well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and carers.
Positive Partnerships:
We work closely with parents and carers to provide a personalised and supportive curriculum for each child. We offer transition meetings, meet the teacher, workshops and stay and play as well as the annual parents evenings and reports.
Impact
Our work in the EYFS enables our pupils to develop:
- Communication skills
- A strong awareness of their own and others’ physical and mental health needs and how best to support these
- A strong sense of belonging
- A love of learning
- Independence
- Strong foundations in the basic skills.
Our curriculum meets the needs of our children, including our disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND, and we spend time looking at and evaluating how children are learning. This is achieved through talking to children, looking at their work, observing their learning experiences and analysing data and progress by year group, class, groups and individuals. Every member of staff uses ongoing assessment and knowledge of the whole child to identify children’s starting points and plan experiences which ensure progress.
